You see your enemy load his rifle with the declared purpose of taking your life — yet you are to wait, as a wise expedient of defense, until he makes the "overt act" and shoots you. Such is the 'delay' urged on the South: an absurdity only submissionists could propose.
Next post: Charleston Mercury, Dec 20, 1860 →
The post above is condensed. From the original, word for word
"Although you see your enemy load his rifle with the declared purpose of taking your life, you are to wait, as a wise expedient of defense, until he makes the "overt act" and shoots you. This is one of those glaring absurdities, which only such daring submissionists as BOTTS and CRITTENDEN are capable of proposing."
Between the posts · the narrator, not the paper
To the fire-eaters of Charleston, the danger now is not the North but delay — the Southern men who counsel waiting for a convention, or for an overt act.
The Rhett family's Charleston Mercury — the organ of immediate separate-state secession — rebutting the counsels of 'delay' (wait for Virginia, wait for a Southern convention, wait for an 'overt act'). BOTTS = John Minor Botts (Va. Unionist); CRITTENDEN = John J. Crittenden (Ky., of the Crittenden Compromise), named as the 'submissionists.' Directly answers the cooperationist case of se-007. Text from the AHA "Sixteen Months to Sumter" reproduction of Dumond (transcription); excerpt is contiguous verbatim.